Is anyone asking the question: Was Russia more afraid of Cruz winning?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Russian Internet agency and more than a dozen Russians interfered in the U.S. election campaign from 2014 through 2016 in a multi-pronged effort with the aim of supporting then-businessman Donald Trump and disparaging his rival Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Special Counsel said in an indictment on Friday.

The 37-page indictment filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller described a conspiracy to disrupt the U.S. election by people who adopted false online personas to push divisive messages; traveled to the United States to collect intelligence; and staged political rallies while posing as Americans.

(Indictment: http://tmsnrt.rs/2EvtgMh)

Russia's Internet Research Agency "had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election," the indictment said.

The indictment broadly echoes the conclusions of a January 2017 U.S. intelligence community assessment, which found that Russia had meddled in the election, and that its goals eventually included aiding Trump, the Republican candidate who went on to win a surprise victory over Democratic Party candidate Clinton in November 2016.

"This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the Internet," Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, told reporters. "The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to succeed."

A Russian lawmaker called the U.S. charges "another anti-Russian push," RIA reported.

President Trump has been briefed on the indictment announced on Friday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-grand-jury-indicts-13-russian-nationals-three-entities-alleged-election-meddling/

So will Israel indict b o and his cronies for doing the same thing? 

What an amazingly pitiful product for the Mueller expedition.

I think this is probably "his catch".  And I think he'll lose in court.  This is mostly "they said some things on social media".  Unbelievably poor.

Add this to having to drop the Flynn conviction / charges for hiding the exculpatory evidence, and getting sued by Flynn for it........ wow, I'm almost feeling bad for the libs.  Manafort and Page probably skate / sue too.  Too delicious.

All this winning is making me puke.  Like I ate too much delicious ice cream.

Quote from: walkstall on February 16, 2018, 01:37:48 PM
So will Israel indict b o and his cronies for doing the same thing?

Toy said the same thing.

Quote from: AndyJackson on February 16, 2018, 01:57:37 PM
What an amazingly pitiful product for the Mueller expedition.

I think this is probably "his catch".  And I think he'll lose in court.  This is mostly "they said some things on social media".  Unbelievably poor.

Add this to having to drop the Flynn conviction / charges for hiding the exculpatory evidence, and getting sued by Flynn for it........ wow, I'm almost feeling bad for the libs.  Manafort and Page probably skate / sue too.  Too delicious.

All this winning is making me puke.  Like I ate too much delicious ice cream.

BINGO! This is ridiculous, we, "CIA" does this in virtually every country in the world. What the Ruskies did is nothing worse than us going to a Russian forum and spewing Putin hate.
Had they been successful, then, that says more about our ignorance as a Nation and would be deserving of their actions.

Quote from: mrclose on February 16, 2018, 02:02:29 PM
Meanwhile he ignores documented payments from Hillary to Russians for the Dossier that started all this garbage.

Shhhh, don't tell the libs. They still think it was a Trump collusion scheme.

Rosenstein said there were no Americans involved, and outcomes were not affected. Also, the one "unwitting" American was a guy from NY who took some yard signs to give to another guy for a pro-Trump rally.

Quote from: taxed on February 16, 2018, 02:18:53 PM
Rosenstein said there were no Americans involved, and outcomes were not affected. Also, the one "unwitting" American was a guy from NY who took some yard signs to give to another guy for a pro-Trump rally.

Oh that evil bastard! Bailiff, whack his peepee.

Quote from: AndyJackson on February 16, 2018, 01:57:37 PM
What an amazingly pitiful product for the Mueller expedition.

I think this is probably "his catch".  And I think he'll lose in court.  This is mostly "they said some things on social media".  Unbelievably poor.

Add this to having to drop the Flynn conviction / charges for hiding the exculpatory evidence, and getting sued by Flynn for it........ wow, I'm almost feeling bad for the libs.  Manafort and Page probably skate / sue too.  Too delicious.

All this winning is making me puke.  Like I ate too much delicious ice cream.

Its a big nothingburger that cost the US taxpayers Millions, My guess is most of these "Russians" are in their own country and any sort of "extradition" would never be honored.

Also, it looks as if Mule-ear is trying to extracate himself from this mess. Satisfying BOTH sides by offering up some Russians (likely Russian Organized Crime) nobody cares about.

Quote from: Billy's bayonet on February 16, 2018, 02:49:28 PM

Its a big nothingburger that cost the US taxpayers Millions, My guess is most of these "Russians" are in their own country and any sort of "extradition" would never be honored

It was simply a one-year frantic dig for anything to pin on Trump, and it came up empty.  Now, Mueller has told the silent conspirators that he has nothing and won't be getting anything.  So this is their exit strategy.  Try to maintain the "Muh Russia" veneer and the implied "Trump did it but he got away with it".  That's their consolation prize.

Sadly for them, they didn't do anything to hide or overshadow the previous democrat crimes, and they managed to probably F-themselves-up even more with illegal schemes against Flynn, Page, and Manafort.  Hilariously, they just piled on more misery for themselves, just the opposite effect of their little escape plan.

Quote from: mrclose on February 16, 2018, 02:02:29 PM
Meanwhile he ignores documented payments from Hillary to Russians for the Dossier that started all this garbage.

This result plays into the Libs hands. It's finished - time to prosecute and then shut it down. But wait ... there's actual evidence relative to the Hilliary campaign meddling with the election through the false / Clinton funded dossier. Also evidence that the FBI backed off - probably because they feared her for when she would become president. Where are the indictments relative to those facts? The libs may be just trying to wrap this up to control the damage from the recent evidence against crooked HiLIARy.

It's great that the Trump administration can move past the collusion claims ... but a tragedy that lib cronies aren't being punished for their similar crimes.

Quote from: topside on February 16, 2018, 03:03:53 PM
This result plays into the Libs hands. It's finished - time to prosecute and then shut it down. But wait ... there's actual evidence relative to the Hilliary campaign meddling with the election through the false / Clinton funded dossier. Also evidence that the FBI backed off - probably because they feared her for when she would become president. Where are the indictments relative to those facts? The libs may be just trying to wrap this up to control the damage from the recent evidence against crooked HiLIARy.

It's great that the Trump administration can move past the collusion claims ... but a tragedy that lib cronies aren't being punished for their similar crimes.

You do realize, investigations of such magnitude take a long time, right?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/justice-department-looking-into-hillary-clintons-emails-again?source=twitter&via=desktop

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/01/bad-news-crooked-hillary-fbi-launches-new-clinton-foundation-investigation/

Time to turn our attention further left....

Mark Zuckerberg colludes with Russia

by Washington Examiner | Feb 16, 2018, 4:54 PM

As of this week, Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, is now directly colluding with Putin to influence world opinion in favor of the tyrant's regime. It's happening before your very eyes.

Zuckerberg created one of the world's largest and most important platforms for spreading news and information — and fake news and disinformation. It was one of the platforms Russian and other foreign propagandists used most effectively in 2016 to pass off lies as real news stories and to spread messages designed to divide Americans by race.

But what Facebook once allowed through organizational passivity, it is now doing willfully. Zuckerberg's company, the owner of Instagram, has caved to pressure from Moscow and has agreed to suppress Instagram posts that Putin's critics have dug up and presented as concrete evidence of astounding official corruption.

Alexei Navalny, leader of the political opposition, alerted the world this week to Instagram posts that gave Russians and others a rare look at the high-flying lifestyle that government officials enjoy. In contrast to Putin's manufactured image as a selfless public servant, the posts show Russia's deputy prime minister, a powerful Putin ally, socializing on a yacht owned by Russian industrialist Oleg Deripaska, on a trip where the available evidence strongly hints they traded corrupt favors. The two men also tried to conceal the fact of their meeting, with the deputy prime minister leaving the yacht before it returned to port.

In a video showcasing these posts about the yacht trip, along with other evidence of corruption, Navalny presents a compelling case that the official was also brought there on the oligarch's plane. He states that the free trip, the free jaunt on the yacht, and the prostitutes on board would probably all count as bribes, if Russia had honest law enforcement or courts.

Navalny throws in drone footage showing this lifetime civil servant's 17,000-square-foot mansion on seven acres of land. Navalny notes that this Russian official reports on his official disclosure forms that his wife has made millions of dollars in recent years, even though she has no job and owns no other sources of income. This all screams of a huge source of illicit income for one of the most powerful officials in Russia. (Deripaska, by the way, has also been in the news in connection with former lobbyist and erstwhile Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.)

Americans take for granted that Putin's regime and its top officials are kleptocrats, but the regime tries to prevent most Russians from seeing this. That's one reason Putin's approval ratings are so high in Russia — he controls the news, and his enemies can expect to be at least harassed, at worst assassinated.

Navalny's muckraking represents a sudden threat to Putin, which is why his regime put so much pressure on Zuckerberg to help him by blocking the posts under the flimsy pretext that the video violated Deripaska's privacy on his yacht. That Zuckerberg capitulated in this matter, choosing to collude with the Putin dictatorship in suppressing real news is a sickening and saddening development.

One bright spot is that Putin has so far failed to force Google into removing YouTube videos about this, including this follow-up video.

A few weeks ago, Zuckerberg announced Facebook's plans to purify news content that appears on the platform so less "fake news" reaches users. People wondered who would decide what news is real and what is fake.

No one expected it would be Putin.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mark-zuckerberg-colludes-with-russia/article/2649344

Another hit in the face with the poomerang.

Quote from: The Boo Man... on February 16, 2018, 06:47:02 PM
Another hit in the face with the poomerang.

Right in the teeth.